Organically grown fruits and vegetables

The images in this newsletter are some night driptape irrigation art. As you may know, we use driptape to irrigate our beds. The tape we use has slits every 8 inches that drip water at a slow rate (0.67 gallons per minute per 100 feet of tape). The driptape applies the water right at the ground surface, which helps to minimize evaporation and water wastage. Depending on the particular crop in the bed, we space the tapes at different distances to optimize water delivery to the plants. Some plants occasionally receive topwatering with a hose or sprinklers, depending on the crop, stage of growth and ambient temperature. In June when it is really hot and very dry, we will run sprinklers in the heat of the day to cool down the plants and to create some humidity in the field.

We are starting to plant the fall/winter root crops. We will put in beets, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, turnips and various onions, including cippolini.

We are also doing some final planting of summer squash, hoping to get in one more crop before it gets too cool.

Our chiles are starting to ripen. We have jalapeños, Sinajuisa (similar to serrano) and a small New Mexico type green/red chile named Jarales. The Sinajuisa and Jarales seeds were obtained from Native Seed/Search; this is the first time we have grown these two chile varieties and we are excited to find out how they taste. We also have a few poblano chile plants – not as many as last year, but we will have a few to sell.